


someone to count on (and other cheesy idioms about finding your soulmate)

by heyfightme, Omgpieplease (SceneryTurnedWicked)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Fanart, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mutual Pining, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, lesbian Lardo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 05:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12764514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyfightme/pseuds/heyfightme, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SceneryTurnedWicked/pseuds/Omgpieplease
Summary: Eric’s counter reads1. That’s all. Just1. He’s eighteen years old, has not left the state of Georgia in his entire life, and his counter reads1.He has spent many mindless afternoons and worn out many pens in tracing it over into a0. If the counter did read 0, the morning wouldn’t be looming like the black rainclouds that Mama used to call “omens.”Eric is leaving for college in the morning. When he passes the state line from Georgia to North Carolina in the passenger seat of his Mama’s sedan, he’ll also be passing the last chance he has for the counter to make it to2.---Another soulmate AU, this time with pining, lying, and a lot of assumptions.





	someone to count on (and other cheesy idioms about finding your soulmate)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [onawingandaswear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onawingandaswear/gifts).



> This was made for onawingandaswear ([@WhoaCanada](https://whoacanada.tumblr.com/) on tumblr), who is generally wonderful, brings light to our lives, and also loves a complicated soulmate AU.
> 
> Art by [@Omgpieplease](https://omgpieplease.tumblr.com/tagged/my-art)  
> Words by [@HeyFightMe](https://heyfightme.tumblr.com/tagged/my-fic)

Eric’s counter reads _1_. That’s all. Just _1_. He’s eighteen years old, has not left the state of Georgia in his entire life, and his counter reads _1_.

 

He has spent many mindless afternoons and worn out many pens in tracing it over into a _0_. If the counter did read _0_ , the morning wouldn’t be looming like the black rainclouds that Mama used to call “omens.”

 

Eric is leaving for college in the morning. When he passes the state line from Georgia to North Carolina in the passenger seat of his Mama’s sedan, he’ll also be passing the last chance he has for the counter to make it to _2_. That solitary _1_ , that loneliest number, marks the single time he was in the same room as his soulmate. He hadn’t noticed when it had happened, hadn’t noticed until he’d been rolling up his sleeves to wash his hands before kneading dough with his Moo Maw on a mild April afternoon, the day after a surprise trip to Atlanta with his daddy. There it had been, no longer the clean dark oval inked on the underside of his wrist, but a bold and unambiguous line. _1_.

 

Eric had been fifteen years old, and in the three years that had passed, the counter has remained stubbornly stuck. Out of the literal _ten million people_ in Georgia (he’d looked it up), one of them is Eric’s soulmate. They could have met, once. And Eric missed it.

 

He presses his nose to the glass as the _You Are Now Leaving Georgia_ sign passes, and truthfully feels a little lighter inside.

 

\---

 

Eric makes it through team orientation down three pies and up one nickname that he doesn’t even particularly object to. _Bitty_ sounds affectionate and endearing, is a sign that his new team have made a move to accept him, and yet it doesn’t sound too bro-y. It’s wins all around.

 

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t more than a little wary of his new teammates: they are, generally speaking, huge, and _loud_ , and Eric has had more than his fair share of deleterious experiences with jocks. It’s only logical, really, that he should be feeling trepidation. Especially with the way the team’s captain had outright frowned at him and pointedly eschewed use of the newly-applied nickname.

 

It’s not until he has shuffled down the hall to his dorm’s shared shower block, and is squeezing shampoo into his hand, that he notices the counter now reads _2_.

 

The shampoo slowly fills Eric’s palm, overflowing before he feels it oozing over the cup of his fingers. He mutters “oh _shit,_ ” frantic, and sets the bottle down. To rid himself of the shampoo, he quickly works it into his hair. The suds slowly wend a trail down the back of his neck as he stares at his wrist, ascertaining that the counter does, indeed, appear to have gone up. It’s so absurd, Eric lets out a vaguely hysterical laugh.

 

In the relentless sessions of orientation, the getting-to-know-you games with his building, the dining hall, the hockey team, the freshman mixer – he had been there. Eric’s soulmate.

 

And Eric had missed him, _again_.

 

\---

 

Eric’s daddy’s cousin Andrew has a soulmate named Jim. Jim is flaxen-haired and wheat-bearded and has a hay bale of a stomach. He laughs in the stuttered, rumbly way of a tractor engine. He chews tobacco, and in all Eric’s life he has never seen Jim without a beer in his hand. Jim is a shaker of hands and a ruffler of hair and has knees made for bouncing children.

 

When Eric is six or so, or six and-a-half, he tells his daddy, “I like that Jim and Uncle Andrew are married.”

 

Coach laughs like an engine too – like a lawnmower, sputtering out into nothing. He says, “Uncle Andrew’s married to Aunt Tracy, Junior.”  
This is confusing, so Eric – at six or so, or six-and-a-half – tries to hold Coach’s hand.

 

As an adult, Eric can still feel the dryness of his daddy’s palm, the coarse skin on the pads of his fingers.

 

“But Jim said he was Uncle Andrew’s soulmate. That means they’re married.”

Coach shakes his head. “No, Junior. When boys are soulmates, it’s because they’re good friends. There are different kinds of soulmates – not everyone is like your mama and me.”

 

As an adult, Eric can still hear the echo of his own reply: “Oh, okay.”

As an adult, Eric yearns for the easy acceptance that came with being six or so, or six-and-a-half.

 

\---

 

The days that follow orientation see Eric’s counter jumping intermittently, sometimes by one point each day, sometimes by a few. He manages, somehow, not to let it drive him to distraction. There are more important things to worry about, honestly: practice, which is making him feel increasingly and woefully inadequate; his classes, which already seem to demand a lot more work than he was expecting; the hockey team, who despite being friendly and welcoming are still somewhat of a blockade for Eric; and Jack Zimmermann, the team captain, who seems to be the person who is most aware of all Eric’s shortcomings, and the person who is most put-out by them.

 

So Eric gradually gets to calling himself Bitty, he gradually gets to accepting that college life is going to be overwhelming, and all the while his counter gradually climbs.

 

\---

 

Over the Thanksgiving break, Bitty buys himself a wristwatch. It has a nice leather band, and a large round face, and (best of all) it covers his counter. His counter, which has somehow managed to make it to nearly one-oh-five, despite him having been at Samwell for no more than fifty days so far.

 

The watch seems like a necessary measure. Between the literal hundreds of people Bitty encounters every day, he is barely even able to consider which of them might be responsible for the number on his wrist. The sheer volume of people at college is, in a word, overwhelming. Bitty can’t even begin to parse the double-ups in whoever he meets in whichever place, and so many of these encounters are so fleeting that they barely make an impression. This is the thing about meeting your soulmate: there are rarely fireworks. It is, more often, simply one in dozens of meetings a person may have in a day, the only thing to mark it being the unit added to their counter.

 

And besides, Bitty may be _friendly_ , but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s good at making friends. A conversation with a neighbor in a lecture or dithering with the barista at Annie’s does not a relationship make. He is, truthfully speaking, quietly and fiercely thankful for the hockey team. The hockey team, who despite still being largely abrasive and mildly terrifying, have unquestioningly folded him into their back-slapping arms.

 

Still, Bitty can’t help being cagey when Ransom and Holster start interrogating him about dates and girls and preferences; despite Shitty’s double in gender studies, and the rampant homoeroticism in both the Haus and the locker-room, old habits die hard. Old fears, especially so.

 

He doesn’t miss the calculating frown on Jack’s face as he high-tails it away from the four of them, babbling something about pies and libraries.

 

It’s guilt, partially, that gets him confessing to Shitty – because that’s what it feels like: not coming out, but begging for absolution.

 

Shitty is accommodating, and accepting, and actualizes something that Bitty hadn’t considered possible from telling someone _I want to fuck men._ Or, well, something which amounted to that anyway. It spawns a giddy lift in Bitty’s esophagus, and he finds himself blurting out that “obviously, Rans and Holster introducing me to all these girls really isn’t going to help me find my soulmate.” He laughs afterwards, intending a carefree titter, but Shitty just shrugs and replies, “I don’t know. It might.”

 

Bitty raises an eyebrow that contains as much condescension as he feels qualified to give – Shitty, after all, is older and has been the recipient of _five_ comings-out. Bitty has only experienced one: his own.  
“I mean, I’m very definitely gay. I’m going to fall in love with a man one day. I’m going to _marry_ a man one day.”  
Shitty shrugs again. It makes Bitty’s neck itch. “For sure, bruh, but he might not be your soulmate. Platonic soulmates are super common – more than the fuckin’ media would let you know. Everything’s ‘my other half’, ‘love of my life’, ‘one true love’ and all that bullshit. You don’t need romance for someone to be good for you. Like, fucking Lucy and Ethel. Simon and Garfunkel. Cheech and Chong. Eleanor and FDR.”

Bitty snorts. “They were married.”

“What the fuck _ever_ , Bits. Sign of the times. What about Ransom and Holster, huh? Best of bros.”

“I… I didn’t know they were soulmates.” Bitty has to look away, blink down to the frosty pavement. There’s a distinct chill in the air, but his watch is clammy on his wrist regardless. He wriggles his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Fucking A. And me ‘n’ Lardo! That was _hard_ , man, because it took us a little while to figure out we weren’t, you know, compatible. Romantically, or sexually or whatever. And Lardo was having this whole gay crisis anyway. But still, we _click_. We get each other, you know? And when we both get girlfriends, they’ll understand that.”

 

Bitty hums around his tongue, which has surely swollen to two sizes too big for his mouth. He bites down on it, and it throbs in response.

 

Bitty hasn’t met Lardo the elusive team manager, and only really knows that he can beat everyone at beer pong and also burp the alphabet. Regardless of the threat of another bro being introduced to his life, one who experienced a _gay crisis_ no less, Bitty trusts Shitty’s judgement – and more than that, he trusts the order of the universe. He couldn’t like Shitty and dislike his soulmate; it would be illogical.

“I can’t wait to meet Lardo.” He manages, somehow, to be sincere.

Shitty laughs. “Hey, then you’ll have met all the soulmates! Rans and Holtzy, obviously. Me ‘n’ Lardo. And you already knew Jack’s.”

 

Bitty experiences the sensation of a slow-melting ice cube sliding under his collar and down his spine.

“What?” It sounds like a gasp.  
“You know, the entire sport of ice hockey? A love so pure and committed.” Shitty mimes wiping a tear from his eye, and Bitty pushes an imitation of a chuckle out of his lungs.

 

\---

 

Lardo is everything she could never have been in Bitty’s estimation, based on what he had been told.

 

The largest difference between frat bro Lardo and real life Lardo – and the most important one, to Bitty at least – is that she is actually a lesbian. It gives an entirely new meaning to the _gay crisis_ Shitty had told him about in the Fall.

 

Bitty wouldn’t characterize his actions as ‘cornering’ Lardo. Her delicately raised eyebrow, though, may as well scream bewilderment.

“I know we don’t know each other all too well, and this is real bad manners of me to bring up somethin’ so personal when we haven’t even had a chance for chatting, but ah – Lardo. Can we talk?”

 

They abscond from the kegster, to Shitty’s room. Lardo has a key to it, and apparently knows where Shitty keeps his stash. She fishes out a neatly-rolled joint from somewhere in the bookcase, and throws herself into one of the bean bags under Shitty’s loft bed. The invitation to join her is implicit. Bitty lowers himself, a little gingerly, into the bean bag next to her.

 

“You don’t live in the Haus?”

Lardo snorts around the joint. Her lighter takes a few clicks to take, but when it does spark she inhales easily and tucks the lighter back into her pocket through an exhale. “No. I’m the manager. And I was in Kenya anyway, so.” She stretches back in the bag, sending her smoke up towards Shitty’s mattress.

“You and Shitty – um. You’re.” Bitty’s uncertainty is clear, even to himself. The words themselves sound stupid and childish. Lardo shrugs her shoulder casually.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s totally platonic, for obvious reasons. Those chicken legs.” She affects a shudder, throwing Bitty a wry smile. “All seriousness though, it did kind of throw me through a loop. You know.”

 

“Do you –” Bitty cuts himself off with a steeling breath, sharp, wedging his hands between his thighs for some sort of stability. “Do you mind, anymore? That he’s not a girl, I mean. That’s it’s not – uh.”

Lardo’s jaw clenches, almost imperceptibly. She takes another toke, and holds it in her lungs for seconds that stretch long, until finally she breathes out.

“It was… upsetting, or whatever. I’d come to college and I wanted to date girls finally, and then, uh. Shitty. We tried it, for a bit. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? But, um.” She makes to tuck her hair behind her ear, but it being so short it doesn’t really go anywhere. It’s a ghost of an action. “It was like, itchy? Like, uncomfortable and just… shit. So we talked about it, and he was actually feeling the same thing, so.” She shrugs again, this time a bit more smoothly. She’s smiling, albeit minutely. “Can’t be soulmates if you’re not on the same wavelength, right? So, uh, yeah. He’s going to be my maid of honor, and I’ll be his best man, and our wives are gonna be best friends too.”

 

Bitty can hear the love in her tone, can hear that same honesty he hears from Uncle Andrew and Jim, and Ransom and Holster. From Shitty, before Lardo had whirled back into their lives. Bitty gives her a nod and a smile, but he still wraps his hand over his watch and can feel his heartbeat skipping a little fast under his fingers.

 

His number is at nearly two hundred, and his dreams are full of faceless men sweeping him off his feet.

 

\---

 

Concussion initially makes Bitty dry retch a lot. It comes with standing up too fast, or bending down too fast, or turning around too fast: a wave of nausea that inevitably sends him hurtling to the nearest bathroom, even with nothing actually coming up.

 

When it happens in the Haus and he’s wrist-deep in flour, the only thing he can reasonably do is hold his hands out of the way and stick his head in the sink. As he’s spitting the feeling out of his mouth, there is a cough from the doorway.

“Bittle, you alright?”

Jack is speaking gruff and low, the current of authority that echoes of early mornings and terse instructions – of time given up graciously, of real concern rather than surface irritation. Bitty presses his forehead to the cool metal of the sink, and sighs.

“I’m fine. It’s just – it’s nausea. The doctor said it should go away in a couple of days.”

“You shouldn’t be here.” It’s curt, and closer. The feel of Jack hovering near his shoulder encourages Bitty to turn his head to look up at him. He gets a light frown in return. “You should be resting, and away from bright lights – there aren’t even any curtains in here. Do you have a headache?”

 

Bitty squints at him. “I can feel one coming on.”

 

Jack grunts unhappily. “I have Tylenol, and I think Shitty has some Dramamine, hang on –” He disappears as quickly as he arrived. It gives Bitty time to wash his hands and assume a suitably disgruntled pose leaning against the kitchen bench. He’s been given a gag order on using his phone – screens aren’t good for his head – so isn’t able to occupy his hands. Still, folded arms convey his dissatisfaction well enough.

 

Jack returns, brandishing bottles which he dumps on the counter before filling a glass with water.  
“Take two of each, then go lie down on the couch. You’re not going to get past this if you keep agitating yourself. You’re not going to classes, are you?” He regards Bitty with sharp, unblinking eyes, holding out the glass pointedly. Bitty unfolds his arms, but makes Jack wait until he has extracted the necessary pills from their packaging. He washes them down petulantly, keeping eye contact the entire time. Jack simply stares back.

 

“I’m not going near that couch. And I have muffins to finish anyway, so. You can stay here and glare at me all you like, but I’m either baking or going stir-crazy. Which would you prefer?”

Jack grits out a noise of acquiescence, and nods jerkily before crossing to lean by the sink. Bitty busies himself with his flour again, having to re-mold the well in the center of his mixing bowl. He cracks eggs into it, pulling the flour in with quick movements of his spoon.

 

“It’s just… Listen, Bittle, you need to look after yourself. I don’t – I’m not trying to be… You worked hard this year, and you don’t… deserve to lose that.”

Bitty doesn’t turn, still working the batter together. His shoulders, though, drop. He hadn’t even noticed them having been pulled up. Jack’s tone is still edged, but laced with a dry warmth. He’s speaking low, just for Bitty’s ears.

 

“I know, Jack.” Bitty swallows, and closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them, there are still lumps in the batter that need stirring through. “I promise, I’ll be careful.” He has to cough a little, and turns his head to do it. Jack is standing closer, only a couple feet away, arms loose by his sides. He has a sweatband on his wrist, from running. “Thanks for the Tylenol.”

Jack’s mouth turns up slightly at the edges, and his eyes crinkle slightly at the corners, and he steps towards Bitty and lays a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Any time, Bitty.”

 

If he leans a little closer before letting his hand slide away and going back to resting against the counter, well. It’s probably just the concussion talking.

 

\---

 

Summer is stagnant. Beneath the sweetness of magnolias in vases around the house, and the sharpness of mint that gets mixed into giant jugs of lemonade, there is the ever-present salt of sweat that Bitty feels clinging to him, constantly. It seems impossible to wash away, and so he spends every day in Madison the same: slightly caked in perspiration and Georgia dust, running at the crack of dawn around the neighborhood; running to the grocery store; and running a tight kitchen.

 

He gets a tan line from his wristwatch, skin on his forearms turning freckled and golden. The depth of his freckles is the only calendar he trusts. Beneath the band of his watch, the counter is stuck. Bitty rocks himself on his parents’ porch swing, presses dripping glasses of the minty lemonade to his cheek, and texts Jack.

 

Questions come in almost daily, around the same time, when Jack is surely sitting down to some giant protein-and-carb-measured lunch. Jack rarely engages with the team group chat, but sends Bitty a mid-afternoon _headaches?_ or _run this morning?_ or _conditioning?_ most days out of every week.

 

Bitty replies with strings of sarcastic emojis, gets grumbly responses, and finds himself smiling down at his phone. He collects small details on Jack’s training camp experiences – recounts of his time with nutrition classes and PR lectures. His reticent evaluations of the teams. His sardonic comments about the volume of Bitty’s baking productions.

 

On the day of the Bittle-Phelps Fourth of July Cookout, Bitty watches Jim and Uncle Andrew laughing by the grill, and Jack texts him to say his most recent PR session had been on soulmates. Jack has no additional comment on that, seeming to have sent Bitty the information like one might enter it into a planner, and Bitty swallows nearly his whole cup of iced tea in a single gulp.

 

Bitty’s Moo Maw liked to say, “coincidence is Jesus ticklin’ you from behind.” Bitty always supposed she meant something like _the Lord works in mysterious ways_ , but from the way a shudder trips down the length of his spine heedless of the ninety degree weather, in that moment Bitty can’t imagine it’s anything but unseen fingers.

 

There are nearly a dozen practice maple-crusted apple pies made between July and Jack’s birthday, and Bitty force-feeds them all to his daddy and demands critical evaluation. The grunt of approval given to recipe number seven was by far the most favorable, so it is the one Bitty copies onto a piece of notepaper and slots, folded, into the side pocket of his duffle bag.

 

\---

 

Bitty’s cheeks are wind-chafed by early November. The ghosts of those summertime freckles have given way to a near-permanent blush, though instead of being pushed outwards by heat, it’s from being rubbed by cold. When Bitty does feel heat in his face, it is when he has been pulled into Jack’s orbit.

 

He draws cat whiskers on Jack’s face for Halloween. Jack starts using emoticons in his text messages. They circle each other in the Haus kitchen, Jack wrist-deep in flour, and when Bitty looks up to find Jack lit golden by noon sun filtered through the yellow curtains, the illuminated dust motes in the rays seem like lightning bugs in the daytime.

 

Shitty and Lardo find each other dates for Winter Screw, and Ransom and Holster do the same, and Jack goes to the dance with the same girl from last year. Bitty shrugs and has a good time with a boy from the rugby team. They dance. The punch is strawberry-flavored. Troy makes Bitty laugh, and leaves Bitty at the door to the Haus with a brief hug, a kiss to the cheek, and a new contact in his phone.

 

\---

 

The day after Screw, Troy’s face is bright and excited, just as his voice had been on the phone. He stumbles to his feet when he sees Bitty in the doorway, nearly knocking over his chair in the process. It’s terribly endearing; Bitty ducks his face to hide a grin in his scarf.

 

He picks his way across the café to Troy’s table, and is rewarded with another hug for his efforts, this time full-bodied and more than brief. Troy smells nice, like a cottony aftershave. He pays for Bitty’s coffee, and holds out Bitty’s chair. He is a gentleman.

 

As such, it is probably unsurprising that Bitty flops face-down onto his bed on his return to the Haus, lifting his head only to queue up _4_ through his Bluetooth speakers.

 

‘Countdown’ is blasting through the room, and Bitty is still pancaked on top of his covers, when Lardo’s voice sounds out, tentative and raised above the music.

“Bits? You good?”

Bitty turns his head to free his mouth and say, “Oh, sure, Lardo. I’m just peachy,” before going back to suffocating himself in blue cotton.

 

There are a few beats, and the first countdown in the song finishes when Lardo settles herself cross-legged on Bitty’s lower back. She pats his hair a couple times, but otherwise doesn’t say anything. Bitty sighs into his duvet.

 

It seems expected that Shitty would come looking for Lardo, and that he would take Lardo’s sitting position as an invitation. Bitty isn’t aware of his presence until he settles his butt on Bitty’s shoulders, what feels like his feet bracketing Bitty’s spine.

 

“Ugh, Shitty. Too much.”

“Shh, man. Let us weigh you back down.”

It does feel nice, in a vague and distant way, being flattened into his mattress. Maybe if it just swallows him up, he won’t have to deal with anything any more.

 

Beyoncé sings ‘ _killing me softly and I’m still falling’_ , and as if on cue, Jack responds with “What’s happening in here?”

 

Bitty makes an involuntary noise of distress and tries to wiggle from under Shitty and Lardo, but all he manages to do is kick out his untethered legs a little.

 

“We’re sitting on little brah to protect him from the weight of the world.” Shitty punctuates this by patting a short rhythm into Bitty’s sides.

“Oh,” Jack says.

It’s silent for a few moments, except for the song, and Bitty feels relief flooding through him at the knowledge Jack has probably left. That is, until he feels two-hundred-pounds of hockey player settling itself onto his thighs.

“Oh my god, no! You weigh a _ton_ , Jack, let me live!”

“Protein, Bittle,” is all Jack says, and Bitty feels large hands encircling his ankles.

“This is it,” Bitty moans, “this is how I die. Let my obituary read ‘ _Crushed to death by hockey butts and an artist, in the name of aggressive friendliness.’_ ”

“’ _He died the way he lived: listening to Beyoncé, overwhelmed by emotions_.’”

“Only the good die young, man,” Shitty intones.

“ _Vive le boulanger_ ,” Jack adds.

 

To top it all off, the dusting of sugar over the whole thing, is the song transitions and Bey starts singing about pining for a lost love. Bitty makes a noise that can probably only be described as a death-rattle, and once again tries ineffectually to buck the bodies of his friends off his back. Jack pushes his ankles back into the bed. Shitty purposefully digs his ass deeper into Bitty’s shoulders.

 

“Wanna _taco_ ‘bout it, Bits?”

“Shits, that joke only works if we’re eating Mexican food.”

“Can’t blame a guy for trying to cheer up his heartbroken buddy.”

“I’m _not_ heartbroken,” Bitty protests, but is silenced by a round of _shhh_ ing.

“Why would Bittle be heartbroken?” Bitty still slightly marvels at how Jack manages to ask things that should sound caring with such a clinical monotone. He sounds disgruntled, if anything.

“Bittle would _not_ be heartbroken. Bittle would be… vaguely embarrassed.” Bitty is aware of it seeping through in his tone, indignation giving way to something closer to mortification.

 

“You had another date with rugby guy, right? What happened? Did you spill something on yourself? Spill something on him? Did you sneeze on him?” Shitty pauses a moment, thoughtful. “Did you pop a boner?”

“ _Ugh_ , Shitty, _no_.”  
“It’s fine if you did. Happens to everyone. It’s happened to me. Right, Lards?”

“Like, constantly.”

“Um, I can’t help my natural enthusiasm for everything. So sue me, dude. But it does happen to everyone, at some point. Jacques, my guy, back me up.”

“No comment, man.” Jack sounds like he’s smiling. It makes Bitty sigh harder.

“Well, I _didn’t_. He only said yes to the second date because –” Bitty hesitates, and grates out a noise like _tchah!_ before steeling himself and continuing. “He only said yes because his counter went up after Screw, and he was trying to figure out if it was because of me or this other guy he met on his way home.”

 

The resounding silence speaks for itself.

 

“And I basically had to show him that it – that it _wasn’t_ me, and he made a big _thing_ out of apologizing, and insisted on sitting there until I’d finished my coffee.” He exhales through his nose. “I burnt my tongue.”

 

It takes him a moment before he registers Jack is rubbing little circles into his ankles with his thumbs. Bitty is thankful for his face being pressed into his bed when his eyes fill with wetness.

 

“Did you… want to be the guy?” Shitty’s voice is stilted, awkward, and Bitty is sure there’s some sort of nonverbal conversation happening above his head.

“No, I just. He was cute, and I just. I just wanted to date him. He was nice.” Bitty sniffs, and is glad that the tears aren’t really audible in his voice. “It was just that after I showed him, told him about my counter, he looked at me different. Like, pity or something.”

 

Lardo says “fuck him” and Jack grunts a little, while Shitty makes a decidedly outraged noise.

“You’re in fucking college, dude. More people have zeros than not. To have found your soulmate before you’re thirty is, like, a fuckin’ _miracle_. The odds are just not on your side.”

“Ransom has a spreadsheet,” Lardo supplies.

“You guys found yours,” Bitty reminds them. “ _And_ Ransom and Holster.”

“And we’re a fucking lucky minority, dude. Jack’s practically old enough to be all our dads and he’s still on zero. It ain’t no thing.”

“I’m twenty-four,” Jack interjects, weary-sounding. He goes ignored.

“You’ve got dozens of dates and a shitload of _s’wawesome_ dudes in your future, brah. One of them’s gonna be your guy.”

“Hah, yeah,” is all Bitty manages.

 

They’re silent for a bit longer, until Bitty says “I can’t feel my toes.”

Lardo is the first one to stand up.

 

“Let’s get froyo.”

 

\---

 

Jack brings Bitty coffee. They eat dinner together, most days. Bitty instructs Jack in combining butter with flour and not over-working the pastry. They run into each other between classes, and Jack runs Bitty into the boards on early mornings, and they run the blocks around the Haus as the sun is going down. Bitty looks at the tip of Jack’s nose pinked by cold, at his eyes turned mirror-pale by white Winter sun. Jack’s shoulders push at the seams of his last-year’s coat. He smiles as he tells Bitty “don’t forget your toque,” and his lips are pinked as well.

 

Bitty’s counter hides beneath his watch, and gloves, and layers of sleeves. It climbs, unseen, though classes and cafés and crowds playing in the snow on the quad. In the night time, Bitty blinks at his ceiling with fingers wrapped around his wrist. He dreams about a zero he has never seen, and of Jack Zimmermann sweeping him off his feet.

 

\---

 

It’s unbelievably not until March, not until the season is starting to demand shorter sleeves and Bitty is able to forego his jacket and gloves, that someone notices how high the counter has climbed. He and Shitty are setting up for a kegster, and Shitty is handing him a solo cup of something he assures Bitty is safe and not beer, when he exclaims “Holy _fuck!_ ” and simply drops the drink on the ground.

 

Bitty jerks in surprise, and on reflex scrambles to catch the tumbling cup. His efforts are thwarted, however, as Shitty snatches at his wrist and turns it over so the counter there is exposed to the ceiling. It reads, still neat and bold, _1500_. It seems monumental, somehow. Bitty has the hysterical thought of throwing it a birthday party.

 

Shitty stares.

Bitty says, “Oh, right. That.”

Shitty sputters for a moment, complete incredulity clear. “ _That_? Bitty, my guy, I’m not being funny but that is a fucking _huge_ number.”

“I know.” Bitty twists his arm free in the most pointed-yet-polite way he can. Shitty never bothers to cover his own respectably low _11_ , and neither to Ransom and Holster make any attempt to disguise their _3_ s. With most of the rest of the team bearing _0_ s, promises of meeting their soulmates still to come, Bitty has been the only one with anything to hide. Without a sleeve to pull down, he holds his arm behind his back.

 

Shitty squints at him.

“Sorry, brah, just. We all thought you had a zero.”

“Yes, well.” Bitty isn’t really sure what to say. He lacks the tools to explain to Shitty in a way he will understand; how he doesn’t monitor the counter minute by minute, and it jumps without him noticing. That there are so many overlaps in the people he passes each day, he can’t truly be sure which of any of them it is. That the person he has been _hoping_ will stop his counter is well outside the realms of possibility.

“You – ah. You don’t…?” For the first time since Bitty’s known him, Shitty seems at a loss for what to say. He runs an uncertain hand through his hair, and his eyebrows draw up into an expression that Bitty can only really interpret as being pitying. He looks away, unable to deal with the implications of that.

 

Shitty coughs, once, and tries again. “Why haven’t you guys stopped the counter?”

“I don’t know who he is.” Bitty’s trying to sound lofty, and nonchalant, but is aware that he just sounds terse.

“Oh, shit.” Shitty says it soft and crestfallen, and next thing Bitty knows he’s being folded into the naked warmth of Shitty’s chest. He tenses for a moment, before something washes over him. He brings his arms up around Shitty’s back, and clings to him, and for the first time in a long time feels the size of his number looming over him.

 

“Um. Is everything okay?”

 

Jack’s voice is deep and hesitant, and audible even above the music that Shitty is blaring through the kitchen, meaning he must be standing close. Bitty makes to disentangle himself from Shitty’s hold, but is pulled back in by a tightening of arms. He sighs into Shitty’s chest.

“Our friend Bits is living a fucking Grecian _tragedy_ , brah.”

“I’m not –” Bitty starts, but is cut off by Shitty saying “shh” and stroking his hair.

“Oh,” is all Jack says.

 

“Did you know how fucking huge his goddamn number is, man?”

 

Bitty makes a noise of protest, and succeeds in shoving himself away from Shitty, certain that his face – which feels about a thousand degrees hotter than it should – is bright red. He immediately clamps his own fingers around his wrist, obscuring the counter from Jack’s blank-but-probing gaze.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s fine, I don’t even care.”

“By which he means it _does_ matter, it’s _not_ fine, and he absolutely fucking _does_ care.”

 

“How huge is huge?”

 

If Bitty wasn’t red before, he certainly is now. Jack’s expression has taken on a thoughtful tint, a contemplation in his mouth and something settled in his eyes that betrays a genuine interest. Bitty bites his lip and casts his eyes down; this is all too much.

 

“It’s a few hundred, and it’s _not a problem, Shitty_ , so just –”

“It’s _fifteen-hundred_ , dude. It’s a giant elephantiasis dick and enormous, sweaty balls of a problem.”

Jack whistles, lowly, once. “That’s quite a number there, Bittle.”

“I know! Okay, I know. I try not to think about it, but I know. That I keep passing him, and keep missing him, and it’s probably just going to keep climbing for forever until there’s no room for any numbers left and I’ll be the only person on the planet with a number in the _gazillions_ on my arm.”

“Well. Not the only person.” Jack says it dry, deadpan, and Shitty and Bitty both stare at him for a moment before Shitty snorts out a laugh.

 

“But still, I don’t think we should let it get to that point. What do you say we stop that counter, eh?”

Bitty raises an eyebrow at him, and folds his arms, and starts to say, “And how, Mister Zimmermann, do you propose we –” when Jack fits both of his broad palms around Bitty’s jaw and draws him up into a deliberate, firm, and lingering – yet brief – kiss.

 

He pulls away slowly, and Bitty finds his lips puckering as though to reach out to Jack’s and prolong the contact. Jack keeps both hands cradled around Bitty’s face, looking down into his eyes with an expression that now betrays uncertainty that wasn’t there before.

 

In the background, Bruce Springsteen wails about being born to run.

 

“Shut up, Boss,” Shitty mutters. Bitty registers him stepping away before the music cuts out into silence. He’s still looking up at Jack, arms still folded, abjectly and utterly confused.

 

“That – uh. That should do it.” Jack clears his throat gruffly, and drops his hands before putting a foot of distance between them. He folds his own arms.

“ _Brah_ ,” says Shitty, almost reverently, but Bitty still can’t look away from Jack. Jack, whose expression is rapidly shutting down and closing off. Bitty reaches out with one hand and stumbles forward a little, not entirely sure what he’s intending. He stops with his hand a bare inch from Jack’s forearm where it’s crossed over his chest. Jack’s eyes drop to Bitty’s hand, and he frowns. It’s such an echo of his initial reaction to Bitty, his initial _distaste_ and complete lack of interest, that Bitty snatches his hand back immediately.

 

Jack says, “Bittle,” and there’s a thread in it that’s gentle. He opens his mouth as though to say something else, then snaps it shut and grits out a frustrated sigh.

 

“I can’t believe I had my first kiss to Bruce Springsteen.” It’s the only thing Bitty can think to say. It definitely doesn’t have the desired reaction; Jack visibly pales.

“Shit,” is all he says. Then, he’s turned and darted out of the kitchen before Bitty can so much as take a breath.

 

“Ah, fuck.”

Bitty jolts. When he does wrench his attention from the doorway, he finds Shitty regarding him with a sympathetic grimace.

“That man is a beautiful specimen, but sometimes he’s too damn bro for his own good.” Shitty’s grimace stretches further across his face, and he steps forward to offer a consoling pat to Bitty’s arm. “He just needs to get the ‘no homo’ out of his system, and he’ll be fine. You know not to take it personally, right Bitty?”

“No homo,” Bitty echoes, listless. It comes to his own ears through plugs.

“Yeah, that’s probably why he took so long, huh? You know how he gets in his head, poor fucker. He’ll get over himself eventually. He’ll figure out what we all do; you guys were best friends before, and you’ll be best friends now.” He reaches to ruffle Bitty’s hair, grimace finally transitioning to out-and-out grin. “Welcome to the platonic soulmates club, bruh.”

 

The lumps of what Bitty wants to say get lodged in his throat, so he just strains a smile to his lips, and nods.

 

\---

 

The silence from within Jack’s room is broken by a loud and distinctly gruff sigh, and the words “you fucking idiot.” It’s what pushes Bitty over the edge from simply lingering at Jack’s door, to knocking on it. The pause from within gestates for what seems like whole minutes, before Jack finally answers.

“Who is it?”

Bitty’s _tsk_ comes in spite of his trepidation.

“Who do you think?” He’s barely done with his attempted snark when the door is flung open to reveal Jack, breathing slightly hard, looking slightly disheveled.

“Lord, Jack. Are you okay? Listen – it’s fine, it really is; I understand what this all means. You don’t have to worry, or feel bad. I’m well prepared for a platonic soulmate, and I’m just – Jack, I’m so glad it’s you. I really am. I don’t want you to think that this is – I mean, it’s great, isn’t it? We’re like… it’s all of us, isn’t it? Ransom and Holster, and Shitty and Lardo. You and me. And I understand why it took this long, I do, but it’s good now, because we can keep going how we’ve been going: ‘best friends’ isn’t far from ‘platonic soulmates’ anyway, so –”

“Stop saying that.” Jack’s voice comes desperate and dry, hooking into Bitty’s chest and pulling him closer, ever so slightly, into the doorway. Still, a familiar chill runs down his back: single ice cube, slow melting. His eyes, on the other hand, burn.

 

“Saying what? ‘S-soulmates?’ _Well_. Jack. I mean –”

“No. No, ‘platonic,’ stop saying ‘platonic.’ That’s not – Bits, you don’t.” Jack’s expression, frantic and wild, crumples before Bitty’s eyes. He seems to fold in on himself, even losing inches of height. It’s worse, even, than finding him after their Frozen Four loss. This time, Bitty gets to witness it happening. Before he can reach out and comfort, Jack makes a noise like a choked-off sob.

 

“I’m sorry. Bits, I’m so sorry.”

Bitty clamps hands, as gentle as he can make them, to Jack’s biceps. “Hey, sweetheart, listen to me. You don’t have to be sorry. It’s _fine_.” At the endearment, Jack’s face relaxes minutely – a flicker of bliss. When he speaks again, his voice is rounded, and warm in the way Bitty has become used to.

“I was going to make it so romantic, and I fucked the whole thing up.”

 

Bitty’s stomach lifts: swinging from a rope into a watering hole, the brief seconds of flying between letting go and hitting the water. His face warms.

“Romantic?” It comes at a whisper, hissing with uncertainty. Jack makes a soft hum in reply.

“Yeah, Bits. Yeah.” His hands come up to Bitty’s hips, a barely-there touch. Jack can be gentle in ways Bitty is sure only he is privy to – coffees bought without a thought, and jackets given to stave off the cold, and small smiles over fingers deep in dough. When Jack says “will you come in? Please?” it’s just as gentle, just as barely-there. Bitty nods.

 

With the door closed, and with them seated at opposite ends of Jack’s bed, the room seems oppressively quiet – until Jack clears his throat.

“I really am sorry. I, uh. I screwed it all up, really. I had a whole plan, but then you were there in the kitchen and it was at fifteen-hundred, and I, um.” He’s tensing again, and drags a hand through his hair which makes it stick up in a haphazard way. Bitty shuffles closer to him on the bed. “I didn’t even realize that fucking Springsteen was playing. I’m really sorry, Bits.”

“You – um. Springsteen?” Bitty can’t grasp at what Jack is telling him, can’t latch on to what the apology could possibly be about. He’s still stuck, truthfully, on the word _romantic_.

“Yeah. It was going to be Beyoncé. That ‘halo, halo’ song? I was going to text you to come in here, and we’d tick over to fifteen-oh-one, and that song would be in the background. And I’d kiss you.” He sighs, and leans to rest elbows heavily on his knees. He hangs his head. Bitty shuffles closer. “But instead it was a fucking joke, and Shitty saw the entire thing, and _fucking_ Springsteen.”

 

“Oh,” is all that Bitty can say. As a sound, it is wistful and filled with audible longing. It’s more of a falling sigh than a word, and it makes Jack look up to him with darkened eyes. Bitty shuffles a final time, drawing his legs up onto the bed to kneel facing Jack, feet tucked beneath his body. He leans forward, just slightly.

 

“That does sound very romantic.”

 

Jack’s face relaxes, lips parting and cheekbones coloring, ever so slightly.

“Let’s pretend,” he says. He looks away to wrestle his phone from his pocket, and fiddles for a moment, and then the opening choir of ‘Halo’ is coming tinny through his speakers and tears are springing to Bitty’s eyes.

“Jack,” he tries, and it’s a little bit of a choked-off laugh. He ducks his head and rubs at the wetness under his eyes, cheeks flaring with heat and heart tripping in his chest. He can’t hide for long, though; Jack fits a warm hand around his jaw, and turns his face up with decided tenderness. Jack is looking at Bitty with a depth in his eyes that strikes Bitty as longing.

“Bitty,” he says, and briefly licks his lips, and his eyes slide shut as he guides Bitty toward him.

 

Their lips meet slowly, and Bitty closes his own eyes slowly, and he brings up hands to touch Jack slowly.

 

Jack’s chest is hard beneath Bitty’s fingers, but his mouth is soft. He kisses like a drizzle of syrup, luscious and viscous and compulsively sweet. The tingles in Bitty’s lips spread, and when he feels the gentle swipe of Jack’s tongue between them, he gasps. Jack draws back, barely, and Bitty again lets his lips part, chasing the feeling, asking for more. Jack gives it, unabashedly, kissing Bitty again with a deliberate and certain care for his needs.

 

Jack makes a small noise in the back of his throat, and Bitty is made to be kissed.

 

Their lips tug at each other, and their tongues slide with delicate touches, and their fingers trace skin and leave sparking heat behind. Bitty’s heart flutters, humming-bird quick, and he could cry with how beautiful he feels.

 

After they’ve parted, and after Bitty has climbed into Jack’s lap and felt Jack’s heartbeat against his cheek, and after Jack has clung to Bitty and murmured unintelligibly into his hair, Jack slides their wrists beside each other and says, “This is us.”

 

It is. Their counters, the same black inking: _1501_.

 

Bitty blinks. “It’s our numbers.” Fifteen. One.

“Yeah.” Jack swipes a thumb over Bitty’s skin, almost reverent in the way he touches. Bitty pulls his arm away.

“It’s one thousand, five-hundred and one. _One thousand, five-hundred and one_ , Jack.”

“Yeah?” There’s an uptick at the end this time. Confusion.

“How long have you been – when did you start planning this?”

“Uh.” The flicker of a frown is back between Jack’s brows. Beneath Bitty’s hands, he is solid. “I wanted it to be… I needed the right time.”

Bitty doesn’t leave Jack’s lap, but he does drop his hands from his shoulders and lean back, slightly. “Did you know at one-fifteen? At one-fifty-one? One-thousand-fifteen?” He hears the chill in his own words, but worse than that, he hears the wetness seeping in at the edges. He hears the way his voice cracks. He hears the tremble.

 

Jack’s eyes widen. “No, Bits, I – I’m sorry, I didn’t –” He lifts a hand from Bitty’s hip and cups his face, gaze sincere and direct. “It wasn’t like that. I – last year, I was being… I know we talked about it, but I needed to make up for it. I needed to make sure you knew – that you _know_ what this is, for me. Before, I was thinking about my career; I was thinking about how it is when guys aren’t platonic, and I didn’t want – I was being selfish, Bits, I know, but I needed time to figure out –”

Bitty presses fingertips to Jack’s mouth. “You should have told me.” Bitty swallows, and traces his touch from Jack’s lips to his cheekbone. “You should have said something. You could have explained to me, and then I could have stopped thinking –” He squeezes his eyes shut, and drops his hand back to his own knee. “I thought all sorts. I thought my soulmate didn’t care. I thought he didn’t want me. I thought I’d never have… this. I thought I’d just want you forever, even after you found who was meant for you.”

Jack makes a pained noise, a sharp exhale that sounds forced out of him. He cradles Bitty’s face between both palms, and draws their foreheads together.

“You’re meant for me. It’s you. And I am so sorry I was so scared, Bits. I never wanted to make you hurt.” He rubs his nose alongside Bitty’s, and leaves a kiss to his eyelid. “You’re allowed to be mad. I deserve that. But I’ll make it up to you. I will.”

 

Bitty nuzzles into the junction of Jack’s neck and shoulder, and slides his arms around Jack’s waist. Jack pets at his hair, and Bitty breathes deeply, and he lets himself be held.

 

\---

 

Jack in Georgia sends Bitty smiles with white teeth and sun-reddened cheeks. He smells of the salt of sweat and the sharp musk of his aftershave, and his hair curls dark and damp from under backwards caps. He keeps a sweatband on his wrist, and jokes with Bitty’s mama about how he’s just not strong enough for the Madison heat.

 

Jack presses Bitty against the cool bricks of his parents’ house under the shade of the back porch, dripping beer dangling from his knuckles, and uses two fingers from his free hand to tilt Bitty’s chin up. He kisses with a mouth sticky from Summer peaches, with the slight scratch of these few days’ stubble, stale beer taste seeping past Bitty’s lips. Bitty finds himself licking deeper, and feeling fifteen.

 

They figure out, when Bitty was actually fifteen, where the _1_ had come from. It had been an extravagant early birthday present, but the Thrashers were still a team back then, and though Coach may not wholly understand hockey – sport was sport.

 

For Jack, it had been the April before he would start at Samwell. His dad had been fond of the phrase “explore your options.” Uncle Mario had been expounding the virtues of buying a team in retirement. The Thrashers were going down, they were playing the Pens on their home turf, and Bob said, “Take a trip. Go scope them out for me. Have a chat to your uncle.” Mario didn’t go to every game, and it was only he and Jack in the box.

 

In retelling, Jack smiles at Bitty in a way that doesn’t reach his eyes, and says, “If it looks like a set-up, and it smells like a set-up.”

 

He’d gone to the bathroom, and returned to his seat with a _1_ on his wrist. After watching the Thrashers live up to every ounce of irony in their name, and listening to Uncle Mario talk his ear off about space in Wilkes Barre, Jack had called his dad to tell him two things: that Bob shouldn’t buy the team; and that he was definitely going to Samwell.

 

Bitty gapes at him.

“We were in the same bathroom?”

Jack frowns. “No. Uh – we could’ve… it could’ve been outside; we could’ve passed each other by a hotdog stand, or something.”

“Or, we were in the bathroom together. We could have peed next to each other. Jack!” Jack is breathing laughs, mouth struggling against a smile. “It’s not funny! It’s mortifying. No one can know this.”

“Why not?” Jack counters, irony seeping in. “Just a coupla guys bein’ dudes. Best friends pee next to each other all the time.”

 

Jack comes to the Bittle-Phelps Fourth of July Cookout, and is introduced to everyone there as “Dicky’s friend Jack, from up north.” Bitty’s skin swelters underneath his watch. He tosses Jack cans of soda, and pointedly says “have a coke; you look parched” each time. Bitty nurses his own icy lemonade. As he’s watching the grill while Coach is inside getting more sausage, Jim sidles up to him and silently offers a dash of whatever is in the flask he keeps on his belt; Bitty accepts, and lets each mouthful from then on sit in his mouth until it goes warm. When his daddy returns with a fresh plate of meat in hand, Bitty downs his drink in one and trails into the cool of the house.

 

Jack emerges from the upstairs in a fresh t-shirt, cap in his hand and hair a matted mess of sweat and Georgia dust, and Bitty catches him at the bottom of the stairs and ushers him back up. Instead of his own bedroom with the huge shuttered window overlooking the back garden, Bitty guides him to the guest room, turns on the ceiling fan and draws the curtains. Bitty falls to the bed with arms stretched to the headboard, closes his eyes, and lets loose a sigh. It’s not until the bed dips beside him, Jack mirroring his position, that he says, “I love you.”

 

Jack lets out his own sigh, and when Bitty turns his head on the mattress to look, he is smiling at the ceiling with closed eyes.

“I love you, too.”

 

They lie there, a few minutes more, before Bitty groans and hauls himself to his feet.

“There’s food to be eaten, Mr. Zimmermann. Let’s get you another cold drink.”

 

\---

 

Jack’s arm slung over the back of the booth at Jerry’s has a palpable presence, though it doesn’t actually make contact with Bitty’s shoulders. Bitty can feel the warmth of him, can smell his own body wash and deodorant on Jack’s body, and the heated ceramic of his coffee mug is making his fingertips smart.

 

Jack makes quips in a low voice, increasingly silly comments about stuffing and toy rabbits that filter through Bitty’s monologue about whoopee pies. He watches Bitty talk, small settled smile about his mouth, unchanging even as Bitty chirps him back and nudges a teasing elbow into his side.

 

Their friends arrive in a cacophony, a tumble of voices and bodies that surges into the booth around them and sends Bitty’s heart skittering. His hold on his coffee cup turns to a firm grip.

 

Jack tells him, “whenever you’re ready,” and it doesn’t feel like the right word. ‘Ready’ seems to suggest that there is a set amount of priming that can be done, that there is a threshold of preparedness that can be reached. ‘Ready’ is for ovens that can be preheated, and for pumpkin that can be puréed, and for preserves that can be set. ‘Ready’ doesn’t describe the feeling that comes with Jack’s arm sliding to his shoulders, and with holding Jack’s hand on the table while their knees knock beneath it. ‘Ready’ misses out _supported_ and _capable_ and _unafraid._

 

Bitty says, “Me and Jack are soulmates,” and their friends fall silent.

 

Shitty clears his throat. “We, uh – we know that, brah. Like, we’re not telling anyone, obviously, but you didn’t – we know that. Right?” He glances to the others, eyebrows raised and spelling skepticism. The other three nod. Lardo does so with eyes trained on the table, on Jack and Bitty’s joined hands. Bitty looks away from her, fixing on a point on the far wall, just above Ransom’s head. There’s a crack in the paint.

 

“We’re dating. We’re soulmates and we’re dating.”

 

The answering noises are unintelligible as words, simply exclamations of assent and revelation – a chorus of cawing. Bitty shares a laugh with Jack, a brief and wry grin before they fall subject to interrogation. Ransom throws the first stone.

“How long after? Like, when did you figure out you weren’t – uh. You know.” He gestures between he and Holster, a significant twitch of his head as punctuation.

“We never were,” Jack inserts before Bitty can so much as take a breath to answer.

“Huh?”

“We were never platonic.” He takes a sip of coffee, tone easy and matter-of-fact. Bitty snatches up a menu and hides his grin behind the laminate. Jack presses their thighs together under the table.

 

After whoopee pies have been eaten and coffee has been drunk, there are two conversations that occur at the Haus. The first, Bitty only hears parts of – hears Shitty telling Jack, “I’m sorry if I made things harder for you.” Hears Jack say something about getting better with feelings. Bitty resists interjection.

 

The second conversation happens when Jack is tucked up napping in Bitty’s bed, when a batch of cinnamon sugar muffins are baking away and Bitty is idly soaping his mixing bowl. Lardo introduces herself to Bitty’s periphery, and says “So there’s been more than one kiss, I guess.”

 

Bitty feels his cheeks heat. “Yes, well. I know you did your little deets-exchange with Jack, so you really don’t need me to corroborate any of that.”

“By saying that, you’re corroborating.” She has picked up Bitty’s wooden spoon from the bench, and makes lazy work of licking the residue of muffin mix off it. “I have a date this afternoon,” she adds finally. “I’ve been dating.”

“Oh! Well that’s – good. It’s good?”

She nods, and licks some batter from her top lip. “Yeah. It’s good. Her soulmate is her sister, so. But she hasn’t met Shitty yet. I need to coach him before we get to that point. He’s champing at the bit, though. ‘When do I meet your girl?’” She shrugs, and dumps the spoon into the sink. “It’s rad.”

Bitty wets the spoon with soapy water from the mixing bowl, and sets about scrubbing it clean.

 

“I’m really happy for you, Lardo.” Bitty throws her a smile that he feels in his blood, and Lardo gives him one in kind.

“Back at you, man.”

 

The oven timer dings.

 

With the muffins cooling on a wire rack on the kitchen counter, and with Lardo putting on eyeliner in her bathroom, Bitty sits next to Jack on his own bed and rests his cheek on Jack’s shoulder. The Haus smells like cinnamon, and Bitty’s counter reads _1501_. Jack’s does too.


End file.
